Search engines provide a powerful tool for locating documents in a large database of documents, such as the documents on the World Wide Web (WWW) or the documents stored on the computers of an Intranet. The documents are located in response to a search query submitted by a user. A search query may consist of one or more search terms.
In one approach to entering queries, the user enters the query by adding successive search terms until all search terms are entered. Once the user signals that all of the search terms of the query are entered, the query is sent to the search engine. The user may have alternative ways of signaling completion of the query by, for example, entering a return character by pressing the enter key on a keyboard or by clicking on a “search” button on the screen. Once the query is received, the search engine processes the search query, searches for documents responsive to the search query, and returns a list of documents to the user.
Because the query is not sent to the query processor until the query is completed, time passes while the user is building the full search query. It would be desirable to have a system and method of speeding up this process.